One of the Twine committee’s priorities for 2017 is to improve the state of Twine documentation. We’re facing a few related challenges. First, there are two versions of Twine in use in the wild: the old 1.x release series, which many veteran users of Twine still swear by; and the newer, more web-oriented 2.x series. While some concepts are applicable to both versions, it can be confusing and frustrating for beginners to look for an answer, but find out it doesn’t apply because it talks about a different version of Twine.

Secondly, Twine documentation is scattered across the internet! Although there is an official wiki, to get the best answer to a question about Twine, you’ll likely need to do a web search. That means that not only do beginners need to sort through advice that might be outdated or doesn’t apply to the particular version of Twine you are using, they’d also have to sort through the cornucopia of the web to find a good answer.

There are three things the committee is working on to improve the situation, and they all focus on the Twine wiki. First, we’re surveying the web at large to find the best Twine resources we can. Once we’ve identified them, we’ll either make sure they’re linked from the wiki or possibly even incorporated into the wiki directly— with the permission of the author, of course.

You can help with this task! If there’s a resource you think is helpful but isn’t already on the wiki, please tweet a link at @twinethreads, the official Twine account. We’ll incorporate it into our planning process.

We’re also looking for a volunteer or two to help manage the Twine wiki. This would entail the typical gardening work that most wikis require: identifying outdated content, planning ways to better organize pages so that they are easier to find, and other organizational work. It’s not glamorous, but it has a huge impact on the community. You’ll be helping hundreds if not thousands of people become skilled with Twine. If you’re interested in volunteering, please email hello at twinery dot org. Make sure to list any relevant experience in your message, and what goals you’d have as a volunteer.

Finally, we’re planning to create more documentation ourselves. We know there are gaps in using Twine that just aren’t covered in any documentation, but in order to focus our efforts, we need to have a complete picture of the state of things. That’s why we’re gathering as much existing documentation as we can first. So, look for more updates on this part of the committee work later this year.